This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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Telling Slanted Truths
The Empress of Weehawken By Irene Dische Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pages, $24. Irene Dische, an American writer living in Berlin, is best known for short stories in which Germany figures as a wild territory, one where the memory roams like a ghost seeking scattered bits of its past. Many of her characters are…
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Exit Zuck
Exit Ghost By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin, 304 pages, $26. Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy & Epilogue 1979–1985: “The Ghost Writer,” “Zuckerman Unbound,” “The Anatomy Lesson,” “The Prague Orgy,” and (previously unpublished) television screenplay for “The Prague Orgy” By Philip Roth Library of America, 645 pages, $35. Reading Philip Roth’s new novel, “Exit Ghost,” is like…
The Latest
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October 19, 2007
100 Years Ago in the forward Joseph Steinberg, a Yiddish variety performer, lived happily with his wife in the couple’s South Brooklyn home. At least that’s what all the neighbors thought. As it turns out, Mrs. Steinberg isn’t Mrs. Steinberg at all; she is Mrs. Mandel. Although the couple lived as man and wife for…
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Yid Vid: Arlen Specter, Funnyman
The Chicago Tribune’s Josh Drobnyk has the story: Arlen Specter, the 77-year-old Pennsylvania senator and former Philadelphia district attorney, doesn’t exactly exude humor. But apparently he’s got a knack for stand-up comedy. The five-term senator won second place in the annual D.C.’s Funniest Celebrity contest last night, finishing behind an editor for the satirical newspaper…
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One of Most Relevant Thinkers You’ve Never Heard Of
The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions By Christian Wiese Brandeis University Press, 292 pages, $50. Like most things German, the philosophy of Hans Jonas is complicated. But its main thrust can be summed up by its leading moral imperative: “Act so that the effects of your action do not destroy the future…
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Great Day on Eldridge Street
Scores of klezmer musicians descended on the Lower East Side last Friday to be photographed on the steps of the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Organized by musician Yale Strom, the “Great Day on Eldridge Street” photo shoot was timed to coincide with the shul’s 120th anniversary. Award-winning radio reporter and Forward contributor Jon Kalish filed a…
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As the Carousel Turns
Within the folk art field and even among Judaica scholars, Jewish folk art has been given short shrift — relegated, sadly, to religious artifact. Unlike Shaker or Mennonite contributions to the field, “the word ‘Jewish’ never entered the vocabulary,” said Murray Zimiles, an artist and a State University of New York professor. Zimiles labored 12…
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The Anti-‘Fiddler’
It presents nine actors playing dozens of roles, including a stone gargoyle and a deceased bride. It has an onstage band featuring accordion and tuba, costumes by fashion designer and recovering Lubavitch Levi Okunov, and spooky animation by artists Tine Kindermann and Mor Erlich. And that’s just the beginning. The latest adaptation of I.L. Peretz’s…
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A Photographer’s Family Album, and Ours
For most of us, family albums are packed tight with shots of smiling relatives lined up at life-cycle events: the bris, the bar mitzvah, the wedding. Such pictures do not interest Israeli photographer Vardi Kahana, who has taken the concept of the family album and exploded it with One Family, an exhibit currently on view…
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Memo to Michael Steinhardt: ‘Duh.’
This past summer, philanthropist Michael Steinhardt rocked the Jewish institutional world when he announced that he sort of regretted the $125 million he had spent on Jewish causes. “Is the Jewish world any better today than it was 13 years ago? Have things really improved? Are we reaching more people?” Steinhardt asked. “I don’t have…
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Swedish Wish
Reader Debbie Rabina writes: “We have just returned from a family vacation in Sweden, where we spent some enjoyable time in the old city of Stockholm — Gamla Stan. The name immediately brings to mind the site of Gamla on the Golan Heights, and I am curious as to a possible connection between these two…
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